When an owner gets embarrassed, someone has to pay and Tennessee Titans Owner Amy Adams Strunk decided that it was time for the sword to fall on GM Jon Robinson.
It is hard to sit here and reconcile exactly what this means for the Tennessee Titans both short and long-term. When you look at who is going to fill the role for the remainder of the season, it looks like Ryan Cowden is going to step up from his role as Vice-President of Player Personnel.
The last time Amy Adams Strunk made a move in the middle of the season, she fired Ken Whisenhunt and Mike Mularkey took over as the interim HC. She was so impressed by him that she insisted on keeping him even to the point where she told prospective GMs that they weren’t going to have the freedom of picking their own coach.
I bring that up because it could mean that Cowden could impress ownership again and end up as the next GM of the Tennessee Titans.
How much power will Mike Vrabel have over the Tennessee Titans
One byproduct of this firing is that Mike Vrabel now has a lot of power in the organization. You could argue that Amy Adams Strunk has gone all in on Vrabel and you never want an owner who doesn’t understand why that might not be a good idea.
Mike Vrabel expected to have significant power after #Titans' dismissal of general manager Jon Robinson, according to league sources
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) December 6, 2022
Mike Vrabel has been very clear on what he thinks the winning formula is in the NFL. He believes that you have to run the ball (a lot apparently) and you have to pass the ball efficiently.
When you decode that, it means that his vision of the Tennessee Titans roster is a team that runs the ball early and often, and then when you pass the ball you don’t have much room for error. In other words, Todd Downing is doing a great job calling plays in Vrabel’s mind.
Instead of looking at wide receivers in the draft, I would imagine that the new Tennessee Titans are going to spend a lot of their resources on rebuilding the offensive line. That is great news and it is something that absolutely needs to be done, but this is not good news for anyone expecting this new regime to guide the team into an offense that can move the ball through the air.
Like all things, time will tell whether it was a good decision to fire a GM who had never had a losing season despite multiple head coaches, coordinators, quarterbacks, etc. In favor of a head coach who believes that the same things that won games in the 90s will win games now.
I’m not sure a distraction was what this team needed most with a month until the playoffs, but it is what the Tennessee Titans got and we are all just witnessing the fallout.